Cinematic car chases
Steve Macqueen driving his special Mustang in the film Bullitt / kellycarcommunity.com There are second-unit directors whose speciality is the car chase. These are usually urban, but the countryside has also seen some [...]
Pontiac
Algonquin Chief Pontiac / macmillanmh.com Some of our many readers will be disappointed that this post is not composed about the finely-produced American quality motorcar that I fear has passed away and perhaps [...]
The Home Guard (a.k.a.Dad’s Army)
The Home Guard in training / dacorumheritage.org.uk Thanks to a BBC-made TV series stretching from the early Sixties to the late Seventies, a phenomenon from the Second War has become memorable. The [...]
The Hohenzollern family
William ! of Prussia / en.wikipedia.org Of all the great and influential German families, descending from the mists of time, always involved in something – providing kings, making a nuisance of themselves, being [...]
Armies
A moment’s rest during The Great War / frivolousendeavour.wordpress.com There are times when we believe that that History is nothing but series of forgettable dates, the names of Kings or Presidents or Prime [...]
Archers and Archery
English and Welsh bowmen (and King Henry V) at Agincourt / lookand learn.com An archer was a soldier, usually professional, armed with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. It would be [...]
The House of Guise
Mary of Guise, Queen of France and mother of Mary Queen of Scots / vacationsscotland.biz The name of a branch of the ducal house of Lorraine in France, it became prominent, if not [...]
Two Hawkins, father & son, both ‘pirates’
Sir Richard Hawkins / thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com Sir John and Sir Richard Hawkins or Hawkyns would have preferred to be called seamen, or navigators, or simply sailors. That is how British history books describe them. [...]
The Passive Voice & the use of the Double Negative
The passive voice is most popular with writers and speakers in the Anglo-Saxon world. It is rarely used in Latin countries. It is formed by inverting the subject and the object of a sentence, + [...]
Monks, Friars & Orders
The founder of the Franciscan Order / ginagenis.wordpress.com Men who renounced a worldly life in order to enter a monastery were many in medieval times. They are few and far between now, but [...]
The Battle of Cannae
Cannae / forums.taleworlds.com This was not just an armed, bloody struggle between fighting men. It was one of the classic victories in military history. Carthage’s general Hannibal (q.v.) faced a Roman army with [...]
King Canute, Knut or Cnut
Canute was King of England, Denmark and Norway. There are various distinct ways of spelling his name, but he will always stay in the memory because of something he did which has either been misconstrued [...]
The Fuggers
Jacob Fugger / redroom.com Now before the bloodhounds of Google get hot about the collar and assume I am using a form of Anglo-Saxon four-letter-word in the plural, give me time to assure [...]
The Intelligence Services
The new SIS headquarters on the Embankment, London / en.wikipedia.org Where dictators or democratically elected governments rule, they need organisations dedicated to the gathering and evaluation of information, mainly concerning the intentions of [...]
All-time mysteries: Roanoke Island & the Marie Celeste
Roanake: what happened to the settlers? / sonofthesouth.net In Albemarle Sound off the northern coast of North Carolina there is an island which was the first English colony in North America. This is [...]
Serfs
As villeins or servants of a medieval lord serfs were not actually slaves, though many writers of historical novels would have them so. Peasants they were, and by no means free. They were there to [...]
Dr. Beeching & the British railways (1960s)
Dr. Beeching: not even Hitler could have done so much to change the face of Britain / mirror.co.uk One of the greatest achievements of the Victorians took place in the home country, not [...]
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